


Phantom Pain

by cakeisnotpie



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Prompt Fill, Tumblr Prompt, feelings of worthlessness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-06
Updated: 2014-07-06
Packaged: 2018-02-07 18:33:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1909392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cakeisnotpie/pseuds/cakeisnotpie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is Bucky? Is he just a soldier and a mechanical arm?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantom Pain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [uuuhshiny.tumblr.com](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=uuuhshiny.tumblr.com).



Thing was, Bucky used to be damn good with his hands. He could throw a mean curve ball, turn an ice cream crank at just the right speed, and make a woman come just from his fingers on her clit. And he loved the way all those things felt. The weight of the ball, the raised row of stitching that his thumb would caress as he turned it in his chalky palm. The freezing iron in the summer heat, sweat on his neck and condensation on his fingers. Hot folds of flesh, slick and easy, rolling between his finger and his thumb, the little jumps she’d make under his touch. 

When he was the other, the winter, he hadn’t missed it, didn’t want to feel the rubber hilt of his knife or the stock of his rifle. Didn’t want to know the blood on his hand was still body temperature. Dead and emotionless was the only way to survive, to forget what human touch was like. To not remember anything from before.

Now, the damn arm is all they want to talk about. They take it off and all the white coats swarm around it like bees after honey, ignoring him, leaving him sitting on the cold metal exam table. Phantom pain, they tell him, as he jumps and starts each time they poke and prod the arm even though it’s in another room, on another floor. It’s the only part of him they want, the part that is unfeeling and mechanical. The rest of him is just a muddled up mess of programming and glitches, memories and regrets, worth nothing more than to be tossed on the ash heap and given up as a lost cause. 

Then there’s a brush of fingertip across the back of his hand, a slow pattern of light strokes that smooth him out and bring him back. The warmth of breath on his neck, the prickling of hairs on his arm from the closeness of another body. Someone who knows what it’s like to be torn in two, to be too cold and numb to care. To desperately want to be wanted, but to expect to be thrown out as used up, not in fashion, not exactly what everyone wants you to be. 

Mechanical fingers flex and grasp as real live flesh ones wind around the other hand, squeezing tight until Bucky can feel every muscle and joint.

The scientists gasp in surprise.

Bucky just holds on for dear life.

 


End file.
